


absolution

by zauberer_sirin



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Future Fic, Hugs, Nightmares
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-06
Updated: 2016-12-06
Packaged: 2018-09-06 21:50:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8770696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zauberer_sirin/pseuds/zauberer_sirin
Summary: Coulson has some unfinished business. Daisy offers to drive him.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hamsterfactor](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hamsterfactor/gifts).



He is presented with a hand painted, delicate tea set, guessing this is someone who appreciates those things. Coulson can relate.

Everything in the room seems small, and extremely arranged with an obsessive order. A passion for order.

Coulson feels an itch on his left hand. Which, of course, it’s not real. He also knows it’s not the same hand, but in a way it is, and he fidgets, as if he wanted to hide it from view.

He watches Thomas Ward’s hands as he pours the tea. Certain hesitation is understandable, certain trembling. He hides it well. Some people are forced to hide well.

There’s a familiar resemblance of course, which is unsettling (Coulson staring into eyes that are so much like his victim, as much anyone can say such a man was a victim). But that resemblance fades out soon. There is something about Thomas that was always missing from Grant. Coulson would call it warmth or a sort of spiritual generosity - he could also call it calm. He feels calm in Thomas’ presence. For all his nervous nature Coulson feels calm when finally sitting in front of him.

“Thank you,” he says when Thomas pours the tea.

“Sorry I didn’t have any coffee in the house.”

“This is fine.”

Good tea, too. Coulson doesn’t like tea, but he can appreciate this is good stuff.

He scans the room for a moment, his profiler’s eyes can’t help but go over every surface, every clue. A humble-sized house in the suburbs. Nothing like what Thomas grew up with. A classical taste. It’s not just the order. The man likes small things. Coulson also scans the room in search of something that justifies what he did, a trace that he set something wrong right. There’s a picture of Thomas and a tall, blond man. They are on some kind of ski resort. Thomas looks happy. Perhaps that’s enough, Coulson thinks. He could never see what he did as righteous or just, but maybe it could serve to protect something.

“Thank you for receiving me,” he tells Thomas, hoping to break the awkward silence.

He wasn’t sure he would receive him. The man fixes him an uncomfortable, lopsided smile.

“Thank you for not kidnapping me again.”

That very precise kind of humor, it reminds him of Daisy’s, painfully reminds him, making overt where it comes from. A resigned wisdom under that humor. Something about them so similar that Coulson felt Thomas was familiar the first time he met him, a quietness his profiler eye immediately recognized and classified. He assumed the familiarity was because he had Ward’s features. It wasn’t that. He reminded him of Daisy.

They chat, idle conversation, the situation being so surreal they fall back on nice social conventions. Or they don’t talk at all. Coulson won’t remember much of the details. Thomas doesn’t talk much, but at one moment he poses Coulson a question.

“No body?” Thomas asks.

Coulson shakes his head. “No body.”

The younger man clenches his jaw and for a moment Coulson fears he’s stolen something from him, without realizing.

“Good,” Thomas says, his eyes fixed somewhere far away.

 

+

 

“How did he take it?” Daisy asks when he comes back to the van.

She hadn’t wanted to come in, of course. Or even catch a glimpse of the man. It’s too hard for her, Coulson imagines. Seeing a face that reminds her of something other than Ward now.

“Well, I think,” he says. “I think it did him some good.”

Daisy nods. “Believe me, it did.”

He couldn’t talk about this with anyone else, and when he had told Daisy she’d said it was a good idea. Coulson hadn’t known he needed her approval until he had it. He had put this off for a long time - first out of guilt, then because it felt wrong, for some reason, while Daisy wasn’t here.

“Thank you for driving me,” he says. “I didn’t want anyone to ask where I was going.”

He didn’t want to come here alone, either. But Daisy probably knows that. And back in the base people don’t ask many questions when he says he’s meeting with her, the perfect alibi. The perfect witness too.

“You’re welcome. I was glad to help,” she tells Coulson.

He watches her hands, hesitant around the wheel. He wishes she could meet Thomas. It might be good for her too. Coulson wants to tell her that it’s okay, that his eyes are nothing like Ward’s. More like hers, actually. But she lives in a van, and she doesn’t have delicate teacups, and she doesn’t have a picture of her and her boyfriend smiling in a ski resort.

“Do you need to go back now?” Daisy asks.

There’s something in her voice, like she didn’t want to… but maybe Coulson is just projecting.

“Can we just drive for a while?” he asks her.

He hates being so pushy with her. But he can’t stand the idea of the base right now, of seeing Mack and May and all the people he’s responsible for. Somehow he can’t stand the idea of being around anyone right now. Anyone except Daisy.

“Of course,” she says, starting the engine. “Where do you want to go?”

He hasn’t thought that far ahead.

“I don’t know. Just… not back.”

 

+

 

He places the room key on the table.

“I’m going to take a shower,” he says.

They had driven for hours, until staying the night at some motel seemed the most logical choice. Coulson is not sure who came up with the idea; he knows neither offered any resistance to it. Daisy even looked cheered up at the idea - she confessed she had been busy and had slept in her van the last couple of days and was missing a proper room.

Coulson has a moment of guilt, though. Dragging her along like this.

“Are you sure I’m not distracting you from something?” he asks.

Daisy shakes her head. Then shrugs.

“It’s not like anyone is waiting for me anywhere.”

Those words make his heart fall. The idea no one is waiting for her. He would. He would be somewhere for her to come back to, if she wanted. He would be anything. He always knew this, from the beginning. She has nobody. Coulson can’t conceive a world like that, but that’s how things are.

 

+

 

If he hadn’t been awake because of his own preoccupation he might have never heard Daisy struggle, thrashing quietly in her bed.

He pauses for a moment, wondering if he should really wake her up. But he always wants to wake up when he has nightmares, always thinks how grateful he would be if someone could just shake him out of it. He just hopes Daisy feels similarly about this.

She wakes up almost as soon as he touches her, drawing his fingers over her arm. Her body feels hot like a fever, another thing Coulson has some experience with.

“Daisy?”

She sits up on the bed.

The twin beds are pretty close together, so Coulson can be sitting on his own while talking to her like this. He had found this closeness comforting when they first walked into the motel room. He didn’t feel like being alone, he liked the idea of someone sleeping so close by.

In the darkness he watches Daisy wipe her forehead with the back of her hand, the thin layer of sweat glistening from the light outside their window.

He gives her a moment to gather herself.

“You have quiet nightmares,” he tells her.

Daisy makes a noise at the back of her throat, between amused and desperate.

“Aren’t yours quiet?” she asks, a moment of recognition Coulson is not expecting. It’s a relief, in its own way.

“Yeah,” he admits. “Except at the end.”

The beds are so close that he could hug her like this. He does hug her. It has been a long time.

“I’m okay,” she says into the crook of his neck, like this is so normal to her that he really shouldn’t have worried. 

Well, I’m not okay, Coulson thinks, doing this for more selfish reasons now.

It’s like Daisy can tell.

(Of course she can tell)

She pulls him with her on the bed, lying together on it while still in an embrace.

He has never seen Daisy ask for comfort so openly as now, when she holds tight and silently asks him to do the same, when for all the distance and hesitation that there has always been between them she seems unashamed to pull him into such an intimate position. The truth is Coulson wants the comfort for himself too, so he doesn’t put up any kind of fight. Their bodies rearranged under the covers until they find the most comfortable combination, with Coulson’s arm around her, his hand on her back.

“I’m sorry. It was all hubris. Going to see Thomas Ward. I thought I had done a good thing killing Ward but… all I did was put you through hell.”

“You did the right thing,” Daisy says and he swears he can hear the frown rather than seeing it, it’s so dark. “I would have done the same in your place.”

That seems to Coulson better than any other kind of absolution, better than a simple “it wasn’t your fault”. Maybe she is lying to spare him but it would be a comforting lie anyway, thinking that Daisy would have done the same.

“You did the right thing but…”

He nods. Even if he did the right thing, even if it wasn’t his fault, even if _he didn’t know_ (how many times has he said that to himself, when confronted with Daisy’s pain at Hive’s hands? that he didn’t know, that if he had known…) that doesn’t change what she had to go through after.

What she is still going through now.

She turns on her side, her back to Coulson, as his hand slides over her stomach to her hip.

Coulson thinks she has very good reasons not to want to see his face right now, and he can’t blame her.

“I asked him to take me back.”

“What?”

Her voice is very low and he doesn’t know if he heard her correctly.

“The day that… I followed Hive up to the plane, thinking I would fight him, stop him from launching that missile. Coulson, I swear that was my intent.” There’s a desperation in her voice for him to believe her. Why would she think he wouldn’t? That makes no sense. Then again pain and hurt and years of abuse make the world a senseless place, he doesn’t blame her either. “But when I saw him… I felt so empty, I _begged_ him to take me back. I would have done anything to have him inside my head again. But I was immune…”

Coulson understands the enormity of what she is saying, of what she is _trusting him with_.

How many months has Daisy been carrying the guilt of this secret? It breaks his heart. He knows there’s nothing he can say that will make anything better for her, but it still slips out, hopelessly, selfishly.

“It’s not your fault, Daisy. You were sick. You were suffering withdrawal. People would do anything to escape that kind of pain, it doesn’t mean they are responsible. You are not responsible.”

For a moment he thinks she is going to argue, to tell him he’s wrong - she’s done it before, even compared her behavior to Ward’s. 

But she sighs.

“I know all this,” she tells him.

“But knowing it doesn’t make a difference?” he offers.

He feels her body tremble in his hands, a soft chuckle.

“No, it doesn’t.”

 

+

 

He smiles when she opens her eyes. Slowly, like the light already filtering through the blinds is bothering her a bit. Her eyes look a bit red, yes. He guesses his do too.

He smiles when she wakes up next to him, realizing that maybe he hadn’t wanted to run away yesterday. Just run away with her. Because even though Daisy is still in his life only sporadically so, and Coulson has been missing her more than he can admit.

“Good morning,” he says.

“Mmm, good morning,” Daisy replies.

She smiles back.

Coulson pulls her closer, tightening his grip, his hand over her hip. Daisy makes a noise like it’s a really nice thing what he is doing.

Without thinking about it much he presses his mouth to hers, kissing her softly for a bit.

When he pulls back Daisy’s smile has widened.

“Do you have to go back today?” she asks.

He shakes his head. “I don’t have anyone waiting for me either. Not really.”

She looks sad for a moment - _no_ , he thinks, he didn’t mean to make her sad - but then she kisses him, as if trying to make up for it. Coulson opens his mouth, let her explore it at her leisure. She slides one leg between his, her skin still hot, but not nightmare-hot.

Then she stops and sits up in bed. Coulson looks confused, and truth be told he is a bit sad to have broken the embrace. But Daisy offers her hand and he takes her, lacing their fingers together and that touch feels almost as good as having her sleeping in his arms.

“Good,” she tells him. “Let’s get some breakfast and figure how to spend the rest of the day.”

There’s a promise there - maybe feeble, fragile, but definitely a promise. He’ll take it.


End file.
